Daden's MOD DASA VLC Project featured on Gov.UK News Page

Nice to see our Virtual Life Coach project featured alongside the other Phase 2 funded Defence People projects in a piece from MOD on the Gov.uk web site.

Nearly £1m is being invested to further develop and trial cutting-edge artificial intelligence, psychological, and neuroscience tools and technology such as brain scanners in a bid to boost the training, wellbeing, and mental health support offered to personnel.

Minister for Defence People and Veterans Johnny Mercer said:

"We welcome this £1m investment from DASA aimed at improving the welfare of Armed Forces personnel."
"Our Armed Forces serve this country to an exceptional standard and help to keep us safe, so it’s only right that they receive the best possible training and support."

Chief of Defence People Lieutenant General Richard Nugee said:

"Defence innovation is about more than just the kit our Armed Forces use. It’s also about our men and women who serve our country."
"This £1m investment will see seven projects developed from improving training methods to boosting the pastoral care and mental health support we offer our people."

The funding is part of the second phase of DASA’s Defence People Innovation Challenge funded by the Defence Innovation Fund which is managed by the MOD’s Defence Innovation Unit; and sponsored by MOD’s Chief of Defence People.

Daden Ltd has been awarded around £150,000 to pilot a virtual life coach which can help with day-to-day personal, employment, and career issues with an aim to maintain motivation and supporting retention. The system will also track satisfaction, stress and help personnel set long-term personal and career goals. The system will be trialled at RAF Fylingdales.

Dr Adam Staines, DASA Competition lead, said:

"DASA is working with businesses of all shapes and sizes and academia to find and fund the latest innovations to benefit UK defence and security."

"Building on the successful first phase of this competition we are continuing to mesh cognitive science, artificial intelligence (AI) and the latest technologies to develop tools to support MOD personnel across their working lives."

Full article at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/1m-innovation-boost-for-service-personnels-welfare-and-training

New: Immersive 3D and VR Training and Learning White Paper

An updated 2019 edition of our Immersive Environments for Training, Education and Learning White Paper has just been released, describing how immersive 3D and Virtual Reality can be used to train and educate. The 28 page paper presents some of the academic models which we use to help support the design process, considers some of the key design decisions, identifies the benefits of 3D/VR over physical training and eLearning (whilst accepting that a blended approach is probably the goal), and describes a variety of uses cases by Daden and others to show how immersive training can be used and its efficacy.

You can download a copy FOR FREE (and no sign-up required) at https://www.daden.co.uk/resources - just scroll down to the White Papers section.

BTW - the first version of this paper came out in 2014!

World Space Day at Worcester

We spent Saturday down at the Hive in Worcester for the second year exhibiting at the World Space Day event - apparently the biggest free one in the UK.

We had two Oculus Quests (plus a spare) and managed to screencast from one to a monitor, but the wifi was too ropey to get multi-user working. We had two experiences: standing and exploring on Io whilst looking at Jupiter, and standing and exploring on Phobos whilst looking at Mars.

Both headsets were active non-stop from 10am to 4pm, we didn't even get lunch and had people coming round again for a 2nd go by the end. Lots of great comments from people about how much they enjoyed the experience, and lots of parents taking photos and videos as their kids explored VR and got excited by space.

And it just so happened that the only other people there with a VR headset were RAF Fylingdales, or trials partner on an MOD project!

Daden on UK Government DOS

Daden has been accepted onto the UK Government's Digital Outcomes and Specialists Framework (DOS). This means that we can bid for outcome based solutions from the UK public sector through the Government's Digital Marketpace.

So if you are a public sector provider and need help with chatbots, conversational AI, immersive training and visualisation or Virtual Reality you can now post your requirements out through DOS for us to respond to!

And remember that both Trainingscapes and Discourse are already on the Digital Marketplace if you need a ready-made cloud-based solution at: https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/search?q=daden&lot=cloud-software

AI Survey

In our MD's book on Virtual Humans there is an "AI Landscape" diagram, first shown on this blog, mapping a variety of systems against how "sophisticated" they are, and how "human" they seem.

We plotted a variety of real and imagined computer systems, robots and AI on the diagram, but that was just our assessment (and deliberately not shown above!).

Now we're giving YOU a chance to tell us where you think these systems should be on the chart, as well as how much they reflect your idea of what AI is, and what elements are important in a virtual human.

Just fill out the survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/W6XM537

AND there's a chance to win a copy of the book if you leave us your email at the end of the survey.

The survey is open until 31st March, and we'll be publishing results here in mid 2020.

We look forward to hearing your views.